Question

Nucleophiles and electrophiles are reaction intermediates having electron-rich and electron deficient centres respectively. Hence, they tend to attack electron deficient and electron rich centres respectively. Classify the following species as electrophiles and nucleophiles.

Answer 1

Electrophiles

The electrophile is a chemical species that forms bonds with nucleophiles by accepting an electron pair. It occurs because electrophiles are electron deficient in nature.

Electrophiles can be neutral or positively charged species, which contains an incomplete octet. In organic chemistry, electron deficient species ( i.e., electrophiles) are carbocation, free radical and carbene.

The electrophiles are given below-
$\bullet$ $\left(Cl\right)\dot{}$(Free radical)
$\bullet$ $C{l}_{2}C:$ (Carbene.)
$\bullet$ $(H_{3}C{)}_3{C}^{+}$ (carbocation)

Nucleophiles

Nucleophiles are basically electron rich species ( i.e., lewis bases) which have the tendancy to donate electron pairs to electron deficient species. Nucleophiles can be neutral or negatively charged species, which contains lone pair of electrons for donation..

So, the nucleophiles can be given as:




These are negatively charged species, which contains lone pairs of electrons. So, they can be called as nucleophiles. It can be represented as;

$H_{3}COH$ $R-N-R$

These are electron rich neutral species, which contains lone pairs of electrons, that can be donated to an electron deficient species. So, they can be called as nucleophiles. It can be represented as;